What if there was a portal that made a copy of you

and one of you got transported to wherever you wanted to go, like, instantaneously, but the other duplicate of you had to burn in a fiery pit of sulphur for like 100 years.

That would suck.

Cos as you'd walk up to the portal you know that as soon as you would walk into portal that you'd be in agony for a century, but at the same time you'd get cheap and fast travel, so maybe the trade-off's okay?

it's kind of tragic but i've read at least two science fiction novels that are variations on this theme.

That would suck...I don't suppose the duplicate/portal business model would be particularly viable, doesn't seem that ethical. Anyway, what happens to the duplicate after 100 years? And if you go through the portal again, does that create an extra duplicate? And what if a duplicate goes through the portal? This is madness and I'm begging you not to go through with this.

xp

me too. Can't really say which ones I guess, meant to be important plot surprises.

do you coexist sentientally with the duplicate, or are they a seperate individual?

If the latter, which of you gets to travel, which fries etc?

In my mind, I think an exact replica is generated when you go through the portal. So for the one transporting, it's as if nothing happens - you just walk through the portal and appear somewhere else, unharmed and happy, with no inkling of the horrors the other you is simultaneously facing. For the other one, they go through the portal and straight into the sulphur for 100 years of agony, and then they die. Horribly.

And yeh, I guess if you keep jumping through the portal, you keep creating versions of you in the fiery furnace.

you just walk through the portal and appear somewhere else, unharmed and happy, with no inkling of the horrors the other you is simultaneously facing.

In that case the advertising devised by the marketing department of the portal company would never mention the fiery horrors awaiting your duplicate. Like the ads for Rekall in 'Total Recall' never mention the possibility of brain scrambling.

sounds p sweet tbh i'm in

Oh yeh, EZ-Portalz Inc. would probably not bother to mention all the unfortunate side effects that are happening to people that aren't you. iPhone sales would go down etc etc chinese workers etc.

guys this is important progress shut yer commie mouths

http://www.eccentric-cinema.com/images2003/movie_pix_q-z/soylent_green09.jpg
"EZ-Portalz is people!"

frying them in hell seems pointless, but tbh at that stage of technological development the need for labour is not gonna be huge so it's prob not any great loss

I think I'd like to look for a way to break my dupes out of 'hell' (I bet it's some VR hook-up thing), and then I'd have my dupes to go to work for me, so that I could continue my adventures - and there would be no exploitation as those dupes are me.

I resent working for me for free now, so I don't think I'd be too happy working for a version of me that is meaner than me, even if I did rescue myself from the fiery pit. That's some fucked up Freudian shit right there.

but it wouldn't be you, we established that

But they'd both be you. The hell-you and not-hell-you have just as much right as each other to call themselves the real you.

I guess this is how capitalism started.

seperate consciousness refutes the thrust of yr point

I don't think I had a point. Apart from it sucking. Which it does.

not in a nice way, or anything

NI guess you could get an injection to knock yourself out when you go into the portal, then get an injection when youcome out the other side to wake up. That way your fiery duplicate is in a coma rather than in horrible pain.

well if you're gonna knock them out then if there was a way to catch them in a net and quickly harvest their organs that'd be handy

Doesn't work like that, it's a one-way trip up the styx, no return fares here.

harsh

but fare

I don't like this sulfur thing. Isn't the traditional thought experiment here that the original is disintegrated immediately difficult enough to resolve without adding unending suffering?

no, tbh

Immediate disintegration is an easy ethics problem - fuck the disintegratee, dude's dead anyway. Unending suffering is a trickier conundrum imo.

Immediately disintegrated is better, I mean imagine having 100s of copies of yourself finding a way to get out of the sulfur pit and then tracking you down to kill you. Shit like that doesn't happen if there's immediate disintegration.

a practicalist! capital, simply capital.

Used to be that you could teleport in peace, nowadays you can't even walk down the street without being attacked by hoards of crazed sulphur-burnt copies of yourself trying to kill you.

public transport in london is shit

who invented this as a thought experiment then? also i think the 'fuck the immediately disintegrated version, dude's dead anyway' guy is meant to be you, usually

that's the experiment. is it okay that you die if your consciousness lives on in the copy -- ie: where does consciousness exist / is it body bound / etc. not sure who posed it first but i've been hearing variations of it for years

this is a different one

the easy version

i'm not even sure what to do w/ the fact that you're consciousness is split like that. are you simultaneously suffering in sulfur pit and on time to your next extraplanary corporate meeting?

http://i2.listal.com/image/915044/600full-jetsons%3A-the-movie-screenshot.jpg

no, you retain yr own and mordyclone starts to burn as a new and precious flower iiuc

http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0PDoTBP6mhOimkAFQ6jzbkF;_ylu=X3oDMTBpcGszamw0BHNlYwNmcC1pbWcEc2xrA2ltZw--/SIG=130qa9gv7/EXP=1315527375/**http%3a//www.jimpryor.net/teaching/courses/intro.older/notes/images/boink2.gif

xp you don't uc -- if anything, mordy clone goes to the meeting and i burn.

oh just reread opening and it seems maybe there's a choice. i assumed original is sent to sulfur as analogous to destroying the original, but maybe it's just the cost of using the machine? like the machine is operated by demons? or maybe like the clone is the fuel to make the machine run?

no, forget whatever original thought experiment you had in mind this is just a question about teleportation

well what are the specifics? does the suffering of one of the clones power the machine that teleports me? is it just some capricious asshole who wants someone to suffer as the price of using his machine? why does one of the clones have to suffer?

I've always wondered if the teleporters on star trek worked similarly to this

its how the clone machine works mordy. You don't get to know why. Lyfe.

It's part of the process. It may be for fuel, it may be part of the physics of the teleportation, we don't really know. All we know is, there is a price. Except for the guy who's not in the sulphur pit, he doesn't pay a price at all, he's home and dry.

To clarify, consciousness at the point of teleportation splits into two, bacteria style. There's no choice involved; you as much go into the pit as get teleported.

wtf at this thread. there are a bunch of short stories/movies/sci-fi books about this exact topic

That doesn't invalidate the point that it would suck.

what the hell is so great about a glorified plane ticket that would damn another person to torture

i'd still have to pay for the hotel and shit

ah, wait til you hear about our package deals

Four star all inclusive, but unnamed sasquatch will stamp an infant's head for every trip you take to the minibar

big FOOTS aka the skullcrusher

Maybe my imagination is lacking. I can't think of anywhere else I would really want to go. I could set myself up to be insanely rich but it's not really worth it

top of tower 2

yeah, if you experience the torture than it's ridiculous and obv no one would do it unless that stipulation was someone hidden or obfuscated in the fine print. if you don't experience the torture, but someone else does, then possibly you'd get ppl who would do it bc they're psychopaths, but otherwise obv no worth it for ethical reasons. the only interesting part of this thought experiment imo is why the person needs to go to sulfur place for the thing to work and if i don't get to know why, then there's really nothing left that i have any interest in

someone = somehow

It's part of the process. It may be for fuel, it may be part of the physics of the teleportation, we don't really know. All we know is, there is a price. Except for the guy who's not in the sulphur pit, he doesn't pay a price at all, he's home and dry.

like, if it's the fuel, we gotta know about the mechanics of this. does suffering power the teleport? maybe that's bc traveling is suffering and so you frontload the suffering w/ the sulfur clone and therefore no suffering while traveling so you get to just teleport.

really inefficient if that's the case. even the worst trip isn't as bad as a century in hell. and i've been on some really shitty trips.

guilt is suffering

Hey guys I have seen the movie The Prestige and it has David Bowie and addresses this question.

What did David Bowie do?

Invented a machine to make copies of yourself that you'd have to deal with. The copies were drowned in water tanks and all kept in the same place, a memento mori of kinds for uh Christian Bale iirc.

pfft i'm pretty sure everyone has a machine that invents copies of themselves that have to be dealt with btwn their legs.

and your preferred method to deal with those copies would be? sulfur or drowning?

ah either way

If it's good enough for Bowie...

yeah, if you experience the torture than it's ridiculous and obv no one would do it unless that stipulation was someone hidden or obfuscated in the fine print. if you don't experience the torture, but someone else does, then possibly you'd get ppl who would do it bc they're psychopaths, but otherwise obv no worth it for ethical reasons. the only interesting part of this thought experiment imo is why the person needs to go to sulfur place for the thing to work and if i don't get to know why, then there's really nothing left that i have any interest in

― Mordy, Thursday, September 8, 2011 8:33 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Okay, no. I guess you voted text in that poll, right? Although I'm not even sure what you're interested in counts as text, I think it's more... 'irrelevance'. From what I know of you, Mordy, I'm going to presume that you believe in hard moral facts that don't ever really change, but surely that doesn't stop discussing them from being interesting? I mean, have you no compulsion to defend your position? (Apologies if I have got this wrong and am over-presumptuous.)

I think this particular thought experiment is not the most well-formed, as it does provide room for easier answers than other ones in the same field, but there are still good questions raised by it.

Number one interesting question: when consciousness is split, which person has the right to claim ownership of the past identity? It is not a question of interior identity, which is YOU, because YOU are the consciousness that is thinking that you are you. It is a question of which is 'you' in the eyes of external identity. Which makes it slightly less interesting than some other thought experiments, but still interesting. Removing even a minimal chance of malfunction wherein the YOU-adherent consciousness is the burning one is a shame, also.

Number two interesting question, which you seem to elide over, is why exactly the "ethical reasons" for not doing this are so obvious. Seeing as the clone would be technically you, do you actually have ownership over it and thus on some moral level are able to do what you will with it, just as you would throw away your nail clippings? And as your stepping into the machine has created the clone in the first place, this again gives evidence that you have ownership of the clone. Does the presence of consciousness make such a difference? If so, why? It's YOUR consciousness, the clone is essentially stealing it.

Number three interesting thing: a slightly different thought experiment but related (I think it's Nozick, but can't find the right references) is the proposition that it would be a loved one who would burn, but once you step through the machine you would believe that they were living the most perfect life, where everything they ever wanted had come true. His idea is that nobody would step through, thus proving that humans are not motivated by hedonism. Personally, I don't believe this is so. I do believe that people wouldn't step through, but I think it's for the same reason that we find the question in this thread easy to answer - when we are in a position of knowledge we find it impossible to imagine the state of not-knowing. Contemplating such an act is in itself unpleasant, but NOT necessarily because of altruism (there are many hedonic-compatible reasons for empathy etc). Basically, while you would be more happy once you stepped through, you can't get past the unhappy-making second of decision without saying no.

I'm tired and blethering and this is very much Philo101 but I still enjoy this sort of thing.

Ugh, definitely written by a tired person. Sorry.

this thread is making me want to rewatch "The Prestige"

third point is a different but interesting debate, first two points are nailed-on otm

nothing, however, could make me want to rewatch the prestige. I wouldn't even ask a clone to do it.

1. Like you said, other thought experiments get at this question better so not so interesting here (much better version imho is the brain in a new body question) -- also since the problem was posed as split consciousness, you are simultaneously burning in sulfur and at your destination. the question of phenomenological split consciousness is potentially interesting, but i don't think this thought problem sheds any light on that particular element.

2. 'hard moral facts' is an ineloquent way of describing what i think is a (Parfit aided -- Rorty influenced) position that is part deontological + part utilitarian. from a deontological perspective it's morally clear bc you have the same ethical obligations to yourself as you do to others and I don't see how ownership mediates that in any meaningful way (not to mention that it opens a whole can of Marxist worms re self-ownership and abjection). from a utilitarian perspective, which is the only area where there's even something to discuss imo, the question then becomes whether the end good (a quick trip) is worth the price (someone -- probably you -- suffering in sulfur) and like i wrote above, i've never had a trip so bad that it can be equated to burning in sulfur. (of course someone might claim that just the existence of such a machine would be a tremendous scientific breakthrough, even if no one ever used it, and so it has value from existing even tho ethically it can never be used - or used only once to test it.)

I do worry that you're so quick to contextualize the question in terms of ownership - and I think my caveat for psychopaths accounts for that option, that in a Capitalist society if you own the clone than do whatever you want with it (and that maybe exercising your ownership is a kind of Randian ethics). Also, I had a write-in vote for 'paratext' in the text/subtext poll.

than=then typo

1. It wasn't presented as 'split conciousness' it was presented as 'seperate consciousness', ie not simultaneous. It's also different to whatever other question you keep wanting to answer, i dunno get over it?

2. The other someone is not you and dies instantly

Now answer the question!

It's not true! They don't die instantly, they suffer for 100 years!

i'd argue that the clone is net equal for the transaction and using the 'bird flying through from endless shadow to endless shadow through a lit room' analogy for life may even be better off.

Also

To clarify, consciousness at the point of teleportation splits into two, bacteria style. There's no choice involved; you as much go into the pit as get teleported.

How are you reading this? "You as much go into the pit as get teleported." If you are experiencing both, how can you conceptualize it as the other someone not being you? They're both you. The way I understand it:

You (A) before split becomes you in sulfur pit (B) and you at destination (C). Person A has been split. Person B and C no longer experience the same things as each other, but they are both you experiencing them. They are distinct from each other in the sense that they have a point (at the split) where they no longer share memories/experiences, but they are still both your consciousness.

i don't recall 100 years of suffering tbh

xp I think you don't understand the problem at all!

the other duplicate of you had to burn in a fiery pit of sulphur for like 100 years.

i think the ground keeps shifting here tbh, i was arguing on a very clear set of facts based on 'lol fuck you clone i'm outta here' and that appears to no longer apply.

I thought the point was that you got dumped in the pit but your clone ended up at the destination; I don't see the feasibility otherwise

lol feasability

we need the op back in here stat

I think he was very clear that you split consciousness and then experience both. That stipulation formed the basis of my skepticism of the value of such a thought experiment.

Of course if you're e.mily you believe that you can do whatever you want with your clone bc it belongs to you, which, idk, I'm reminded about Moten's whole shtick about the "commodity who speaks" (aka slaves)

one of you got transported to wherever you wanted to go, like, instantaneously, but the other duplicate of you had to burn in a fiery pit of sulphur post on ilx for like 100 years.

That would suck.

i prefer the version (and i'm pretty sure i saw robin hanson discussing it recently tho i couldn't refind it yesterday): you step into the transporter and a clone of you down to the last particle is recreated in the new location. the original body is disintegrated. his point was that this shouldn't be ethically different than your original body just transporting somewhere new, but that ppl will have more resistance to the first option than the second bc something appears to be destroyed and that something appears to be you. (this is putting aside any possibility of machine failure). also this ties into his whole thing about emulations -- he would actually be sympathetic to e.mily's point that any em's you create belong to you so you can do whatever you want with them. (Levinas would for sure have multiple problems w/ this.)

harsh on e.mily, mordy. Clones are pretty much always wankers.

I watched 'the prestige' for the first time last week, I sorta liked the first half but then...lol...

well, she said that i wasn't defending my position adequately, so i'm trying to demonstrate why i find her position so ethically untenable. it's not personal!

xp seems morally legit to me to do that. The destruction is only in appearance, there's not really a 'new' nor 'old' entity in any sense that i'd like to have to argue.

'ethically untenable' wtf cmon i know this is just for shits and giggles but ethics? Really?

What about the saving on carbon monoxides, then? Eh?

I don't see how you can say that. If you split in half and then half of you has 20 years of life experience -- marries, has children, works, creates art, etc -- and then at the end of the 20 years you decide to shut him down, how is that distinct from killing a non-clone?

Feel free to answer the question from whatever perspective you want! I personally find the ethical dimension the more interesting part.

i was responding to your 'particle swap' version there btw

oh, that was more about why someone might feel uncomfortable w/ being disintegrated. robin hanson is less interested in ethics than why ppl feel the way they do about stuff.

was he the youngest one?

mmmmbop

Ahh, this got going again, excellent.

a) I do feel the need to point out that the only question I really took a position on was the third - I'm not advocating the burning/ownership of your clone, I'm just suggesting that it's an interesting area to explore. As you have proved by engaging with it rather than dismissing it, Mordy, heh.

b) There's no choice involved; you as much go into the pit as get teleported.

I think this is being interpreted in different ways by people. Split/simultaneous consciousness = 'you x as much go into the pit as you x get teleported'. Split/separate consciousness = both yous are you, but you consciousness x go into the pit as much as you consciousness y get teleported. Both interpretations are valid from the sentence, but I think split/separate was backed up more by the original poster.

c) I don't actually have time for c as I have to get ready to go DJ, but I will come back to this tomorrow. Mordy's raised some good extra points here.